Sonic The Hedgehog

THE BAD:
By today’s standards the game is pretty short

SUMMARY:
This game was probably the turning point in the Sega/Nintendo battle in the console war. Sonic 1 was one of the best games of the time and was the first game I played when I got my Mega Drive when I was 6 years old. Since I was only 6, I don’t remember too many details about how this game affected the world at the time, so I’ll focus more on what I remember of the actual game, which is a side scrolling one.

You play as a blue hedgehog called Sonic and your objective is to stop Dr Robotnik from turning all the animals on the planet Mobius into robots called Badniks. These badniks you will come across all through the game and you beat by jumping on top of them. When you beat a badnik a little furry creature will pop out and hop away. The game is divided into 6 zones, plus one final one. The first 6 zones all have 3 acts in them. At the end of the first two acts you merely have to run past a checkpoint. But at the end of the third act you have to do battle with Dr Robotnik who will be in various machines which take 8 hits to destroy. Once you beat him he will retreat and you run on and have to jump on a machine to free the animals that have been captured.

Throughout the levels you will come across gold rings which you need to pick up. If you manage to get 100 in one level you will get an extra life. But if you get hit by an enemy you will lose all the gold rings you were carrying. They bounce around for a few seconds so you can pick some of them back up. But if you get hit while carrying no rings then you will lose a life. If you have more than 50 rings when you reach the end of the first 2 acts of a level then you can jump into a large gold ring which will take you to a special stage. The objective of this special stage is to find and pick up a chaos emerald without going into a “goal.” It says goal on it which is misleading since first time I thought that’s where you had to go and I promptly failed the mission. There are 7 chaos emeralds to collect in total.

The levels vary from running over green grass to jumping over lava to going underwater. When you go underwater, you can only breathe for a short amount of time before a countdown timer appears. When this happens you need to quickly find some air bubbles and jump into it, which will stop the timer and allow you to carry on. When the timer appears you get some dramatic music to encourage you to hurry up, but if you don’t manage to get any air then you drown and lose a life. The Labyrinth Zone is almost entirely underwater so you need to keep on the move there. The final act of the sixth zone also involves a lot of underwater movement.

There aren’t a great deal of moves Sonic can do besides jumping and rolling. I discovered the roll on the third act of the first zone. I came across a wall and was running towards it when I accidentally pressed the down button and I went into a ball and rolled forward smashing the wall. Those are the only two moves Sonic can use for hitting enemies, but it’s all you need.

You will come across small TV’s in the game. By jumping on them you will get whatever was inside. They range from 10 rings to invulnerability for a few seconds. Another one is a pair of red sneakers. When you get these your running speed goes way up and allows you to travel large distances in a short amount of time. Another very handy one is a force field. When you get this you can take an extra hit which your shield absorbs. Once you take a hit the shield goes, but it saves you losing all your rings or being killed if you have no rings. There are also red and yellow springs in this game. Jumping on them will propel you in the direction it is facing. The red ones propel you faster than the yellow ones and they are frequently used so you can carry on the level or used as a shortcut. Each act has a time limit of 9 minutes 59 seconds and if you reach that limit you lose a life.

When you reach the last zone (called The Final Zone) you will have a final confrontation with him. If you manage to beat him you will run on a bit and hit his escape machine which will cause him to crash. After that Sonic runs back through one of the acts towards the start and you get the ending credits. If didn’t collect all the chaos emeralds you will see Dr Robotnik juggling the ones that you didn’t get and it will tell you to try again. If you managed to get all 7 chaos emeralds, not only will you get to run through the credits and control Sonic, you will also see Dr Robotnik jumping up and down on top of the words “The End” in anger. For collecting all the chaos emeralds, the reward for it wasn’t really that great. You do get to watch Sonic jumping around some of the levels in a pre-set pattern. Randomly pressing buttons did appear to alter what he did slightly. But at 6 years old I didn’t really care that the reward wasn’t great and it was a great game to get me into the world of console gaming.

There were also cheat codes for this game where you could get invulnerability and even a music menu and stage select. Up, Down, Left, Right, A, B, C, A+Start if I remember correctly.

A lot of people have played this game and it really boosted the popularity of Sega as well as giving them their most famous video game character. Despite the fact that Mario had been around for longer, Sonic very quickly attracted a very large fan base and gave Mario the biggest challenge of his life. For the late 80’s and early 90’s it was Sega v Nintendo in the game console world, and for a few years in the 90’s it was basically Sonic v Mario. Finding a Sonic game for the Mega Drive in the shops now will be virtually impossible, but without a doubt this game was a pioneer for Sega and a platform for its success.

THE BAD:
hmmm... well, you may see that sooner or later your sega will crash, losing all data that you have just played. what that you say? just save? no, miho, this is sega genisis we're talking. anyway, these problems are more a SG problem than a sonic problem. anyway, it really lacks storyline. but it really doesn't a need a comprensive one.

SUMMARY:
this was quite possibly the first videogame i've ever played, thinking back. but it definalty gives a good impression! see, sonic no. 1 was made back in the day,(1992 i think) when videogames didn't need incredible graphics to be cool. charactor has text-voices, if any voices, and music was based on popular 80's music. ahh, those were the days. anyway, i hoped you liked my brief anecdote, and now i will get to sonics simple but cool storyline:

professor robotnik was a robot fanatic who was planning on turning everyone on the planet mobius into robot's! he built tons of robots and scattered them all over mobious. but sonic, the chilé dogg loving hedgehog and his sidekick, tails the two tailed fox, wouldn't let him have it! so you you, sonic, have to go through all the realms of mobious to destroy the evil robots(very 80's, i know) that have taken the forms of animals! they have endless forms, so i won't even begin to describe them. anyway, you also have to collect the rings of power(has nothing the do with LOTR) has give sonic the energy he need to fight the robots. and also the you need to get the chaos emerald (which pop-up more oftern in later sonic games) which are imporatant for some reason. every few levels, you will need to destroy one one of robotnik's ships that he pilots. some are really hard to kill, and that's why you have tails(get another controller and a friend. you can play as both of them!) anyway, i gave sonic no. one 3.9 out of 5 for great 2-d graphics, and extra credit for being addictive, but took off for having certain problems that are annoying. don't hate me if you disagree... if you find the lacking of save-system you can always use cheats which let you choose the level you want to be on. so you can pick up where you left off. i recommend this age for classic-gaming fanatics, and action game-fanatis, particuarily side view action fanatics.( you don't come by too many of those these days.) last but not leasst, i gotta tell ya, not to be mean or anything, but tyhis game kicks mario bro's's a$$.